Tamiya 1/16 Tiger I RC Complete Set - The Body

Make sure you have a good gas mask (from home depot) to avoid killing yourself and the family. I prime the body in tamiya grey primer together with all the wheels. You can prime the wheels while they are in the tree since there is a plactic part that goes around every wheel in the kit. Dump them all in the spary booth to rest overnight.

Make sure everything is smooth. If not, sand and prime again. Repeat until you are happy with it.

I pre-shadow the body with flat black. For wheels, I use german grey over the primer, and then post shadow them with flat black.

Let the body rests and have a good time.

This little build-it-yourself hobby drill is great from tamiya.

You need that to drill holes in a few of the parts.

Construct, sand, and prime.

Build the air filters that go to the back of the tank. Some procedure: construct, sand and prime, repeat until I am happy with them.

More parts. The sides, the parts for the back.

Here are the metal tracks. Forget a shoot of the tracks in full metal. Just imagine it the same as this before prime but all shinny metals. The tracks take up a lot of time, since you have to sand them one piece by one piece, then metal prime and then grey prime until you get to what it looks below.

Do 1/2 part sand, 1/4 brown, and 1/4 red brown as the base color for the tracks. I have to spray a few times since I have to move them around to get to the gaps between the pieces.

I cheap out (not much paint) in the inside middle of the tracks since you will not see them when installed with the wheels.

First pass of the body with german grey.

Then, I darken the wheels part more with flat black.

Continue to work on the smaller parts of the tank.

Yes, I even paint the bottom of the tank. People wouldn't see it but I will. So, just happier this way ...

Oh yes, the wheels are washed with brown/sand color.

Da da! The first cut of the body is here. The tracks are spary with 1/2 black + 1/2 metal grey on top of the brown/sand base color with a light brown/yellow wash.

The body got a copule more passes of german grey, flat black shadow, etc to create a feel of "feeling bigger".

The RX-78-1 Gundam is checking the body out.

A really light wash is appied to the body. I want to keep it this way, so the tank feels like it just got off from the factory and transported for short distance.